This was a memory-jogger -- I'd forgotten that my grandfather, a farmer who
hired out to handle horses for other farmers and do their plowing, used
"gee" for right and "haw" for left. Perhaps that's one reason the show
"Hee-haw" sounded like "old-home-week" to many older listeners! Grampa
never had, or learned to drive, a car or a tractor, but was considered an
expert at "following the plough".

Gail Rendle, Nicholson, Pennsylvania

From: Jamie Spencer (jspencer stlcc.edu)
Subject: agee

I know I won't be the only one to write about "agee" and connect it to a line
from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. The self-important major
general Stanley is searching for a rhyme for "strategy" and all he can come
up with is, "You'll say a better major-general has never sat agee." (It works
better with the music.)

Whoa! I like this meaning more than the noun that existed in my
family. "Young lady, you are cruising for a larruping!" I somehow knew it
was a whipping even though no one ever got more than a verbal one. :-)

I never knew this was a real word. My mom used to say it when referring to
homemade biscuits and gravy or some other Texas delicacy. Banana puddin'
and Mexican cornbread were "larruping good" and tasty enough to "make you
want to slap your pappy!" I always thought it was just some made-up word
my grandfather thought of. Thanks for bringing back some good memories.

Dee Kerr, Burleson, Texas

Email of the Week brought to you by Old's Cool -- Stand up straighter.

From: Jim Laughlin (jim ligplaymakers.org)
Subject: larruping

Baseball fans and historians may recall that one of several nicknames for
Yankee immortal Lou Gehrig was Larrupin' Lou. This sobriquet must have
relied on the word's original sense of delivering a beating or a heavy blow,
exactly what Gehrig's powerful bat did to ball with tremendous consistency
over a then-record 2,130 consecutive games played -- a feat that earned him
his most famous nickname, The Iron Horse. Gehrig must have appreciated the
former nickname since he applied it to his barnstorming teams of 1927 and
1928, the Larrupin' Lous, who toured the country off-season playing Babe
Ruth's team, the Bustin' Babes. The teams were actually comprised of local
amateur ballplayers, giving fans who lived in remote areas of the country
the chance to see the two fabled ballplayers in action.

Sportswriters are usually responsible for the clever nicknames, while teammates
dish out the coarser designations, as when the Yankee players, taking note of
Lou's unusually thick legs, christened him Biscuit Pants. Historians can find
no evidence that Gehrig ever considered an alternative name to splash across
his team's uniforms: The Biscuit Pants Bombers. (Check out this classic photo.)

Jim Laughlin, Maynard, Massachusetts

From: Steve Yastrow (steve yastrow.com)
Subject: Your quotation today

Your Czech proverb today, "The big thieves hang the little ones", reminds me
of Shakespeare in King Lear: "The usurer hangs the cozener."

Steve Yastrow, Deerfield, Illinois

From: Jim Ellis (ellis law.unm.edu)
Subject: adverbs

Adverbs have a central place in the study of Criminal Law. When
enacting criminal statutes, legislatures must select which mental state
the prosecution must prove in order to obtain a conviction. The Model
Penal Code establishes a taxonomy of adverbs for this task: "purposely",
"knowingly", "recklessly", or "negligently". (The higher in that list a
particular law is, the heavier the burden that the prosecution must bear
in individual cases.) As a result, first year law students find, often
to their surprise, that the selection and interpretation of adverbs are
crucial topics in their studies.

James Ellis, Professor of Law, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot understand
them. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)